Please save the following proposal form to a disk and fill in your
responses. Download and print this form with your responses and
submit as your proposal.
Since the course must be writing-intensive, please explain in the
appropriate spaces below the kinds of informal and formal writing
you will use, the numbers of pages of formal prose, the kinds of
revisions you will require, and your techniques for intervening in
the students' writing process before completion of final drafts.
Course:
Engl. 460 (WI): Author in Context
Author:
Toni Morrison
Instructor:
Moira P. Baker
1.
List titles of required primary texts by the author.
Required primary texts will include:
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987.
---. The Bluest Eye. New York: Penguin, 1971.
---. Conversations with Toni Morrison. Ed. Danille
Taylor-Guthrie. Jackson, MS: U of Mississippi
P, 1994.
---. Jazz. New York: Knopf, 1992
---. Paradise. New York: Knopf, 1997.
---. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary
Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.
On Reserve.
---, ed. "Introduction." Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering
Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the
Construction of Social Reality. New York: Pantheon,
1992. On Reserve.
---. "Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation." Black
Women Writers, 1950-1980. Ed. Mari Evans. New
York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1984. On Reserve.
---. "The Site of Memory." Inventing the Truth: The Art and
Craft of Memoir. Ed. William Zinsser. Boston:
Houghton, 1987. 103-124. On Reserve
---. Song of Solomon. New York: Penguin, 1977.
---. Sula. New York: Penguin, 1973.
---. Tar Baby. New York: Signet, 1981.
---. "Unspeakable Things Unspoken." Michigan Quarterly
Review 28.1 (1984): 1-34. On Reserve.
2.
List titles of required historical, biographical, social, or
cultural texts you will read as contexts within which to study
the author.
Contextual readings (and viewings) will be selected from
among the following,
all of which will be on reserve for student use:
Abrahams, Roger. African Folktales. New York: Pantheon,
1983.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. In My Father's House: Africa in
the Philosophy of Culture. New York: Oxford UP,
1992.
Bascom, William. African Dilemma Tales. The Hague:
Mouton, 1975.
Bennett, Lerone. Before the Mayflower: A History of Black
America. New York: Penguin, 1984.
Branch, Tyler. Parting the Waters: America in the King
Years, 1954-1963. New York: Touchstone, 1988.
DuBois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: NAL-
Penguin, 1969.
Eyes on the Prize: Awakenings (1954-1956). Vol. 1. PBS
Home Video, 1987.
Eyes on the Prize: Ain't Scared of Your Jails (1960-1961).
Vol. 2. PBS Home Video, 1987.
Eyes on the Prize: No Easy Walk (1961-1963). Vol. 2.
PBS Home Video, 1987.
Eyes on the Prize: The Time Has Come (1964-1966). Vol. 4.
PBS Home Video, 1987.
White, Deborah Gray. Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in
the Plantation South. New York: Norton, 1985.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Ed.
Jean Yellin. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990.
McLaurin, Melton A. Celia: A Slave. Athens: U of Georgia
P, 1991.
Morrison, Toni, ed. The Black Book. Comp. Middleton
Harris, et al. New York: Random, 1974.
Thompson, Robert Farris. Flashes of the Spirit: African and
Afro-American Art and Philosophy. New York:
Vintage, 1983.
3.
List literary critical and/or theoretical texts you will read to
suggest the range of ways in which this author has been
read.
Critical and theoretical readings will include selected
chapters from the following, which will be on reserve for
student use:
Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. New York:
Routledge, 1994.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Chelsea,
1990.
Conner, Marc. The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking
the Unspeakable. Jackson, MS: U of Mississippi P,
2000.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin/White Masks. New York:
Grove, 1967.
---. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance
Farrington. New York: Grove, 1968.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, eds. Toni
Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present.
New York: Amistad, 1993.
Harris, Trudier. Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni
Morrison. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1991.
Matus, Jill. Toni Morrison. New York: Manchester UP,
1998.
McKay, Nellie Y. and Kathryn Earle. Approaches to
Teaching the Novels of Toni Morrison. New York:
MLA, 1997.
Peterson, Nancy J. Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical
Approaches. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.
Willis, Susan. Specifying: Black Women Writing the
American Experience. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1987.
4.
Which assignments for the course require formal prose?
Please indicate the required number of pages for each
assignment.
a) analytic/interpretive essay focusing on one crucial
scene in the Morrison novel that the student will
study all semester (5 pages)
b) written report to accompany Powerpoint
presentation on the history of U. S., with special
attention to Black Americans and race issues during
the years which constitute the setting for the same
novel (5 pages)
c) annotated bibliography of secondary criticism on the
same novel (5 pages)
d) final essay using historical and critical contexts to
analyze and interpret the same novel (8-10 pages)
5.
Which of the formal writing assignments require multiple
drafts?
a) analytic/interpretive essay
b) final essay
6. How will you provide substantive comments for generating
ideas, planning drafts, and revising drafts prior to final
submission of pieces for grading? (For example, you might
use individual conferences, written comments, e-mail
communications, etc.)
For both the analytic essay and final essay, I will either hold
individual conferences with students or read students' drafts
and offer written comments for revision before students
submit the final graded version.
6.
How will you build into the content of the course instruction
in writing the formal prose pieces?
On class days when I explain the formal written
assignments, I will ask students to freewrite to begin
choosing or narrowing their topics and to formulate any
questions they have about the assignment itself.
When we read assigned contextual materials, I will have
students write in class about the implications of such
material to the reading of the Morrison text we will also be
studying at the same time.
When we read critical texts, I will have students write in
class about whether or not they might be able to use a
similar approach with the novel they have chosen to study
all semester.
As students begin drafting the final essay, I will have one
workshop day during which we will look at examples of
student work that use historical and cultural contexts as
well as criticism in order to interpret a literary text. We will
consider strategies for integrating diverse material into a
coherent "reading" of a novel that emphasizes the student's
own ideas and voice. On this day, students will do an
extended guided freewrite to clarify their own ideas about
the novel, pinpoint their audience and purpose, and consider
which contextual and critical works they might include in
the essay.
7.
What kinds of informal writing will you use in the course?
(For example, you might use reading journals or logs, focus
questions or discussion topics, short in-class responses to
lectures or readings, invention and pre-writing for formal
papers.)
a) focus questions. Each day students will design and
bring to class one question on the assigned readings
b) guided freewriting in preparation for the
analytic/interpretive and final essays
c) invention and pre-writing for the first drafts of
these two essays